8 posts tagged “quote”
this is one of my favorite quotes ever. I fell in love with the person who shared this quote with me.
When atoms are traveling straight down through empty space by their own weight, at quite in determinate times and places, they swerve every so little from their course, just so much that you would call it a change of direction. It it were not for this swerve, everything would fall downwards through the abyss of space. No collision would take place and no impact of atom on atom would be created. Thus nature would never have created anything.
-Lucretius 99bc-55bc - quoted in Manuel de Landa's 1000 years of non-linear history
"Love is a personal sharing in the destiny of another person." thanks Liane for taking this!
"If New York can be a hostile but ultimately rewarding environment for an artist, Los Angeles is often the opposite: easy and glittering until you suspect that it all may be a cruel illusion."
This quote really resonated with me. although it refers to artists, I think it refer to any profession. I think you have to be equally steadfast about making sure your soul continues to blossom in both cities - but they key is to to not impose your success from one city on the other. The same humility and drive that you brought to NYC, must be practiced in LA (or vice versa) - or else you will become frustrated. I see this again and again with friends who move from NYC to LA - and the one who don't get eaten alive are those who continue to innovate and continue to work with their new york skin while maintaining an extreme sense of humility and humor. (i.e. go go jetset steve and zadi!)
I read this quote in Conspiracy of Two in New York Magazine, an article about the double suicides of two NYC based bohemian artists who moved to LA and back to NYC. the next paragraph refers to Nathanael West's movie The Day of the Locus, which is about the glittery deceptiveness of LA. In the movie, "nothing happens. they don't know what to do with their time...The boredom becomes more and more terrible. they realize that they have been tricked and burn with resentment."
"sociology which was conceived in the attempt to come to terms with the spread of industrial capitalsism in the 19th century, is ironically being left behind in the quest to come to terms with globalization in the 21st. In place of a sociology grounded in Durkheim's theory of practice, which would solidly connect with studies of global practices in business, science, economics and communication, the discipline has turned to Pragmatism and other more conventional positions that place beliefs and motivations at the center of social life. As a consequence, actual worksite practices, which are essential to the understanding of science and industry, are rendered invisible to the researcher." pg 316
"when insitutional orders fail to meet the changing needs of practice societies fail." pg 318
"How can individual perceptions of natural reality give rise to valid knowledge of that reality? Durkhei argues that because individual ideas are not the origin of human reason, this way of posing the question makes it appear to be insolvable. Accordin to Durkheim, replacing the individualist approach of traditional philosophy, with an approach solidly embedded in enacted social practice, was the only possible solution to the epitemological dilema. A sociological approach to epistemology is necessary, for Durkheim, because knowledge begins with relations between persons, not with the individual. The individual human perceiver does not exist outside of, or, before, society. Therefore, to begin with the individual is to begin with the result of a social process reifying the individual by treating it as if it had an independent existence. The epistemological question remains unsolvable because the process through which human individuals are made rational and human in the first place remains unexamined." pg 11
From Epistemology and Practice: Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
"But networks aren’t the whole story. As networks grow and transform into
active, collaborative communities, we discover how Life truly changes, which is
through emergence. When separate, local efforts connect with each other as
networks, then strengthen as communities of practice, suddenly and surprisingly
a new system emerges at a greater level of scale. This system of influence
possesses qualities and capacities that were unknown in the individuals. It isn’t
that they were hidden; they simply don’t exist until the system emerges. They
are properties of the system, not the individual, but once there, individuals
possess them. And the system that emerges always possesses greater power
and influence than is possible through planned, incremental change. Emergence
is how Life creates radical change and takes things to scale." Read the rest of this essay here.
Ironically, this was written at Television without Pity's review of Michelle quitting this seaon's apprentice, but I am appreciating this paragraph below for different reasons. I sort of replaced the Apprentice's boardroom with other institutions and life situations. Thanks Leah!
Lessons
learned: Any cultural system, whether it be language, sex, marriage,
business, or game shows, has rules. Those rules derive meaning from
context; it's the audience that decides the meaning and enforceability
of those rules, and the audience always includes the players
themselves. In the shifting and sometimes labyrinthine sets of
significance that attend these games, it's sometimes hard to remember
who and where you are without relying on the context clues of your
fellow audience members. The only reason Michelle would falter in that
boardroom is because the other people in the room were either actual
brand-holders whose legitimacy depends on not calling bullshit on the
venture, or coked-up-acting wolverines in a cage whose desire to be on
TV and whose mistreatment on the show has made them crazy enough to
forget reality ever existed. In a position where you're being martyred
to consensus reality, and you start to think you're crazy, remember
where you're standing: the square foot of ground underneath you, that
belongs to you. Take a breath and anchor there, and not in the lunatic
priorities of people who to this point have shown their character, for
good or ill or Tim, pretty obviously. Not that games are stupid, quite
the opposite: everything is games. But there are two kinds of strength
at play in any game: the strength to stay in the game, and the strength
to leave it. Michelle's weirdness and inability to get on board with
the game the rest of them were playing was the thing that made her suck
at this game show. It's also what got her out of the mud.
"Money is the most abstract and "impersonal" element that exists in human life. the more the world of the modern capitalist economy follows its own immanent laws, the less accessible it is to any imaginable relationship with a religious ethic of brotherliness. the more rational, and thus impersonal, capitalism becomes, the more this is the case. in the past it was [possible to regulate ethically the personal relationships between master and slave precisely because they were personal relations. but it snot possible to regulate --at least not in the same sense or with the same success--the relations-between the shifting holders of mortgages and the shifting debtors of the banks that issue these mortgages: for in the case, no personal bonds of any sort exist."
economy and society, Max Weber
"Organization implies the tendency to oligarchy. In every organization, whether it be a political party, a professional union, or any other association of the kind, the aristocratic tendency manifests this very clearly. The mechanism of the organization, while conferring a solidity of structure, induces serious changes in the organized mass, completely inverting the respective position of the leaders and the led...With the advance of organization, democracy tends to decline. Democratic evolution has a parabolic course. At the present time, at any rate as far as party life is concerned, democracy is in the descending phase. It may be enunciated as a general rule that the increase in the power of the leaders is directly proportional with the extension of the organization."
"The democratic currents of history resemble successive waves. They break ever on the same shoal. They are never renewed. This enduring spectacle is simultaneously encouraging and depressing. When democracies have gained a certain state of development, they undergo a gradual transformation, adopting the aristocratic spirit, and in many cases also the aristocratic forms, against which at the outset they struggles do fiercely. Now new accusers arise to denounce the traitors; after an era of glorious combats and inglorious power, they end by fusing with the dominant class; whereupon once more they are in their turn attacked by fresh opponents who appeal to the name of democracy. It is probably that this cruel game will continue without end." From <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Political-Parties-Sociological-Oligarchical-Tendencies/dp/0765804697/sr=1-1/qid=1169343822/ref=sr_1_1/102-4913444-1098564?ie=UTF8&s=books"/>Robert Michels
